Every week at Remotely Awesome Jobs' Remotely Awesome Blog, we'll
try to post some of our favorite recent stories from around the
interwebs, mostly on the topic of working from home.

T.G.I.F.! It's time for another round up of stories and news from around the remote-working web!

If you're following our site, you obviously already know the benefits of working remotely. Business Insider came up with a few that you may not have considered, including the real physical health benefits of avoiding long commutes.

Much of what enabled the Remote Work revolution was driven by the availability of tools which make telecommutes possible. CIO Dive examined the tools which led us here, along with the usual benefits of working remotely and the type of workers who are attracted to it.

Working from home isn't all sunshine and unicorns. Neal McNamara lists some pros, and cons, of leaving the office behind.

Aaron Grosch started an interesting thread over at Treehouse's community forums wondering aloud how to get started (if it's even possible) working remotely from a suburban area after graduating from their online courses. Head over and help him out with some answers!

When I started Remotely Awesome Jobs, it was a side project that actually helped me during my personal job hunt. Now that it's been running a few months, I'd like to make it at least pay for itself - I don't operate it as a charity, and servers cost money. While I've managed to build it on a shoestring budget using the cheapest Digital Ocean VMs, I still have to pay for them (along with SSL certs, domain registration, etc) every month.

I'm not sure we get quite enough traffic yet to begin charging folks for "Featured" or sponsored job posts, so I'm going to experiment with some simple, unobtrusive advertising. I'm really not expecting a whole lot of success, as I'm sure that 1) a lot of Remotely Awesome Jobs' demographic has ad blockers, and 2) I question the efficacy of ads anyway. However, it's the simplest thing I can do to try to keep the lights on and stop paying for the whole operation out-of-pocket.

The first ad is going to appear in the e-mail alerts, clearly marked under a "Sponsors" heading, and will be for a relevant company offering a resume distribution service. If it's successful, great. If not, we'll try something else. However I do promise not to turn this into an ugly spamming operation or clutter the site with irritating advertisements - that'd just drive people away.

This is my first foray into this sort of thing, so your patience is appreciated! :)

One of the great side-benefits of working remotely is the positive impact on the environment. By eliminating the daily commute and reducing the need for office space, remote workers reduce their carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels. Many studies show evidence of the environmental benefits of remote work:

Sun Microsystems reported in that its 24,000 remote workers in its "Open Work Program" reduced their CO2 production by 32,000 tons by simply not driving to work. Other benefits included a reduction in office equipment energy consumption.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) concluded that telecommuting saves 9 to 14 billion kilowatt hours of energy per year. CEA also found that if U.S. employees with telework-compatible jobs worked from home, they'd reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons, and reduce our demand for oil by 640 million barrels.

Dell saved 7,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by allowing 20% of its workforce to work remotely.

Aetna allows 43% of its workers to work from home, and doing so saved 5.3 million gallons of gas, and 46,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Every week at Remotely Awesome Jobs' Remotely Awesome Blog, we'll try to post some of our favorite recent stories from around the interwebs, mostly on the topic of working from home.

Onboarding Remote Workers

It usually feels a little awkward showing up to work as the new hire at a "normal job." Where are the bathrooms? What do people do for lunch? Where do I get markers for my whiteboard? It can be even more awkward as a remote worker. How can you make the experience better than "here's a Slack invite and a bunch of credentials?" Chris Byers of Formstack wrote a great How-to for Forbes: How To Onboard A Remote Team Member

Staying Visible: Managing Remote Workers

Managers who are accustomed to leading teams in a physical office need to adjust to more than just on-boarding. Michael Murphy of Citrix Canada writes for The Globe and Mail that "the strength of a manager comes more from her or his ability to communicate, collaborate and be flexible in their approach to work, rather than her or his physical presence" in How a manager can be visible, remotely.

Ten interview questions to ask remote workers

Have any of you ever been asked these questions in an interview? Sharon Florentine shares ten interview questions in CIO.

When I launched Remotely
Awesome Jobs about six months ago, I thought it'd be nice someday to
have a companion blog where we could share tips, ideas, and whatnot
related to the remote worker lifestyle. It'd have cutting edge stories
like, "what makes a good remote work coffeeshop?", or "my cat is a
difficult co-worker, how do I work with him/her?", or even "which
slippers make the best work shoes?"

It'd be fan-freaking-tastic if
it eventually evolved into a little community where we could share and
commiserate in the comments.

Realistically, it'll probably be some
occasional silliness and some sharing of links to neat stories out on
the wild, wonderful interweb about working where we want to live instead
of the other way around.